Tuesday, July 12, 2011

If things go wrong, don't go with them. ~Roger Babson

It was a lazy weekend for my husband and me, but my kids had off-the-charts-fun so the digital camera was full. Being the compulsive-family-photo-historian, I couldn’t wait to down load the pictures of my older son and his friend from Arizona, and my younger son and his buddy horsing around. I suggested my son download the pictures.

Son: “No problem. I know how to do that.”

He spent some time on the computer then left to use the bathroom. I nestled my can into the swiveling computer chair and looked at the photos. I turned to the camera and DELETED all of them. As in, good-bye, adios, sayonara. The pictures on my computer screen vanished. I panicked, fearing the pictures were deleted from my camera and this world forever.

I discovered my son only VIEWED the photos, not downloaded them. Farump! I fiddled with the camera praying to make them reappear. Nope, they were long gone. Saddened, I realized these memories would never make it to the family photo album. A rush of negative emotions flooded my frustrated head and I wanted to get super-duper-angry. “C’mon!” I told myself, “It’s not like this is open-heart surgery. Yes, things went wrong, but don’t let it ruin the day.” This was truly hard for me, but I decided to take a deep breath and let it go. I had to let it go a dozen more times throughout the day.

Wait, there’s a happy ending! When my techie husband arrived home, he worked some digital-camera-software-download-magic and resurrected the pictures from the deleted trash bin! He is my hero and I am thankful that I did notlet that Evil-Italian-Witch-Mother out of her cage earlier that day. So here’s my new plan:

1 comment:

In Life, Balance is Everything!

Hop on!

Riding a unicycle is like life. To be successful and enjoy the ride, they both require tremendous balance and focus. I sit up tall, shoulders back and imagine I am holding one of my young boys under each arm. My best-friend-techie-husband’s hand on my seat (hubba, hubba) to guide me, and my two wiener dogs running alongside, looking like double Dumbos. As I train to ride Blanche, my unicycle, in a half-marathon, I think how good God is as the breeze blows my brown hair, a big smile on my face. Come along for a thrilling one-wheel ride while I do my best to maintain balance... but keep an open mind, there is always something new to learn!